A new hot Jupiter discovered

According to him, V830 Tau is so young that a 'photoplanetary disk' remains around it.

By Jose Jefferies |
Aug 14, 2016

Scientists have found a giant planet orbiting a baby star. This is the first time such a discovery has been made, and it will offer scientists a chance to study how such stars are made. The planet was discovered orbiting a star called V830 Tau. The star is approximately 430 light years from earth in a star-forming area of the constellation Taurus.

"We did not expect this kind of planet, so early in the life of a star," said Elodie Hebrard, a researcher at York University. "This opens a whole new ball game on how we thought planets were formed."

According to Hebrard, giant planets are thought to form far from their host star, inside a disk of dust and gas that surrounds young stars. According to him, V830 Tau is so young that a 'photoplanetary disk' remains around it.

He added that considering the information that is available in the formation of giant planets, the discovery of the first hot Jupiter in 1995 was a huge surprise to the scientific community. More hot Jupiters have been discovered since then and are believed to represent one percent of the planet's population.

The star has is approximately 3 million years old, making it practically a toddler compared to ours which is about 4.5 billion years old. The planet orbits around the young sun from 8.5 kilometers away. That distance is around a seventh of the distance between the Earth's sun and mercury, its closest planet.

Two theories on how the planets are so close to their host star have been put forward. One that they were gently pushed toward their host star in their early life by the planet-forming disk, and two, a violent interaction with other planets pushed them towards the star. In order to increase their chances of making a planetary observation, the scientists used devices called spectropolarimeters.

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